Boo! 2

When I was a child, Halloween was my favorite holiday.  I loved dressing up and going outside in the dark.  The weather was usually just turning nippy by October, but somehow it was always warm enough on Halloween that we didn’t have to wear coats over our costumes.
My mother had never liked dressing up.  Even as a child she couldn’t see the point of pretending to be something you weren’t.  But she liked the candy, so she always went trick or treating.  She’d usually wear Aunt Pooh’s costume from the year before.

  My grandmother loved to make costumes.  When the kids were quite young,  she decided to dress them as the Three Little Pigs.  She got my grandfather to stay home and hand out the candy and she made herself a wolf costume.  She enjoyed it so much that the next year she decided to do Little Red Riding Hood.  Aunt Pooh was the woodsman, my mother was Little Red Riding Hood, and my Uncle Hank was the grandmother. “You should have seen your mother.  She was five years old and she kept saying ‘This is really dumb’ and rolling her eyes, just like a teenager.  My mother finally told her that she could stay home, but she wouldn’t get any candy and she wouldn’t let me or Hank give her any of ours. Not that she really had to worry about that.  So she went.  Poor Louie.”

This year, Betsey decided she wanted to be a cat.  “A sexy cat?” Josh wanted to know, “Or just a regular one?”

“Or a slutty cat?”  Cilla piped up.

I didn’t know what to say.  But Betsey saved me.  “Don’t be such a moron.  That’s gross!”

Then Josh wanted to know the difference between a sexy cat and a slutty cat.

“Nobody is going to be a sexy or slutty anything.” 

“Veronica and I are going be nuns,” Cilla said.  “But just regular ones.  Veronica’s mom is making the outfits for us.”

“That’s a lot of work for her,” I said.  I didn’t want Cilla to get any more ideas about converting.   “I know!  Why don’t you go as a priest?”  That was an easy costume – black pants, black sweater over a white turtleneck and a cross.  “You can wear makeup.” 

“But she already started it!”   I could feel the “please, please, please” coming.  I didn’t have the energy for it.

“All right.  But you know, there are Episcopalian nuns.”

“Ok.  I’ll be one of them.  Are they sexy or slutty or anything?”

“Certainly not.”

Josh decided to be a zombie again.  Just a regular one, he assured me.